Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and an information processing method, and in particular to a technique related to installation of printer driver software used to perform printing via a computer.
Description of the Related Art
Printer driver installers for installing printer drivers in computers (hereinafter, simply “installers”) are used as software that enables easy installation and setting of printer drivers. Main tasks of installers include addition of new printer drivers and updating of existing printer drivers. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2014-6570 describes a method of handing over setting information in updating printer drivers.
Conventionally, installers hand over print settings and environmental settings under the assumption that handover is performed when a printer driver is revised, for example, when a printer driver that has already been installed is overwritten with another printer driver having the same architecture upon installation of another printer driver. In other words, they are not generated in consideration of the possibility of changes in the architectures of printer drivers. Therefore, in the case of an update that involves an architectural change, a user is required to configure, for example, complicated printer driver settings including print settings and environmental settings by him/herself when replacing a printer driver having an old architecture with a printer driver having a new architecture, even with the use of an installer.
Conventional driver update processing is based on the premise that the architecture remains the same; using this processing as-is in processing for replacing a driver having an old architecture with a driver having a new architecture creates the problem that every target driver is replaced with the driver having the new architecture.
Furthermore, operating system (hereinafter, simply “OS”) venders are contemplating early integration of architectures of supported printer drivers into a new architecture, and thus advancing restrictions on installation of printer drivers with old architectures. When installation of printer drivers with old architectures is restricted especially on a new OS, it is often the case that printer drivers with old architectures can never be installed again once deleted. This makes it difficult to maintain a printing system that uses drivers with old architectures currently used by a user. There is also the problem that the user cannot make a transition to a new OS if he/she chooses not to update printer drivers to maintain the environment.